Russian Federation (RF) forces continued rocket and artillery strikes on civilian targets, inflicting more casualties and destroying homes and businesses, news reports and official statements aid on Tuesday, March 29.
RF artillery units near Siverodonetsk shelled the city’s outskirts during the night and early morning, hitting two apartment buildings, a cardiology hospital, and a recently-built Olympic-grade public swimming pool, said Serhiy Haiday head of the Luhansk region defense command.
The artillery shells killed two, and buried 13 under collapsed masonry. Rescue workers were on the scene and prospects were good survivors might be saved, he said.
An powerful RF artillery rocket or missile of unidentified caliber hit a nine-story public administration building in the city Mykolaiv at 8:45 in the morning, blowing a bus-sized hole in the middle of the structure and wrecking dozens offices, a statement from Ukraine’s Ministry of Emergency Situations said. Nine people were trapped in debris but dug out alive by emergency response teams, the statement said.
Mykolaiv defense command head Vitaly Kim in a video statement accused RF commanders of waiting for city administration staff to start coming to work in the morning, before blasting their office building.
Shelling and rocket attacks also were reported in Mykopol in the Dnipropetrovsk region, and Rubizhne and Popasna in the Donbass region, Hadai said. The Azov National Guard Regiment in Mariupol in a late Monday statement said an RF bombardment using artillery at night and air strikes during the day is effectively continuous.
The night of 28-29 March saw relatively few RF missile strikes, with only two of the long-range weapons reported fired by Tuesday mid-morning. According to an Army General Staff (AGS) morning statement, the weapons hit an apartment building, private homes and garages in a residential section of the Donbass city Lysychansk. The strikes caused fires but the report added no details on casualties.
RF forces following their late February failure to take over Ukraine in a blitzkrieg campaign, and heavy RF casualties in battle against Ukrainian forces, have changed tactics and increasingly used artillery, air strikes and missiles against Ukrainian homes and businesses, in order to avoid fighting the Ukrainian army and in hopes of browbeating Ukraine’s civilian population into submission.
According to statistics released Monday by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s office, RF attacks of all kinds have, since the Kremlin’s 24 Feb. invasion of Ukraine, killed at least 144 children and wounded 220 children. Estimates of overall civilian deaths since the war started a month ago have varied from a low 1,500 to in excess of 5,000.
According to the AGS, RF attacks have damaged more than 60 churches or other houses of worship in Ukraine. The most heavily hit are churches affiliated with Ukraine’s dominant Christian Orthodox faith, but mosques, synagogues and reform Christian churches also have been hit, the AGS said.
